Enjoying excellent company often calls for a drink. What if you’re out someplace, digging the hell out of each other and want to stop at a pub to drink to the very fact of your relationship? Finding a setting for this is rarely a problem unless it’s early in the day. Sunday mornings, especially, present an obstacle to locating an open tavern. Many bars don’t open until the late afternoon because of business considerations or as a vestigial restraint from days of puritanical, rigidly enforced “blue laws.” (It was Quakers, though, not literal puritans who imposed such restrictions in this part of NJ). When you happen to be heading home after a Sunday visit to Columbus Market, say, and you get a wistful urge for public drinking, you enter emergency, “any port in a storm” territory.
We were somewhere around Eastampton Township and we kept driving past interesting looking taverns on Monmouth Road, but it was only 11:00 and they were still closed until noon. I asked Candy to google “bars near me” and see if there was any place that was doing business yet. There was but one. Seven minutes away, on a butt-ugly hyper-commercial stretch of Mt. Holly Road in Burlington, dominated by an enormous Home Depot, was TGI Fridays, nee Thank God It’s Friday (or Thank Goodness It’s Friday, depending on the part of the country where the ads appeared).
Fridays is the oldest of the current crop of franchised bar/restaurants, at least among those represented on this part of the east coast. It was started with a single location in the mid sixties in Manhattan and eventually expanded worldwide. At first it was presented as a “singles bar,” or at least as an adult space, but the mission got diluted as time passed and by now it’s more or less competing in the same arena with Applebees, Ruby Tuesday, and the frequent whipping boy on these pages, Whelihan’s. TGIF has a longer history than those other chains, however, and happily hasn’t been reimagined or redesigned beyond recognition. Whether it’s deliberate or not, there’s a retro vibe to the place that’s very attractive.
The drinking area is on a human scale compared with those in the newest generations of such establishments, and it’s clearly separated from the main dining section. A rectangular bar seats about 20 patrons. On one side is a row of six booths, the seats inviting in their burgundy upholstery. On the other side are some tables. It’s dimly lit, which was a relief that day after coming in from the relentlessly blazing sunshine on that highway full of parking lots shimmering in the heat.
Sunday morning is a mellow time, and the four or five patrons who came in after us appeared to be in a good but quiet mood. One guy knew a lot about Spellbound Brewing in nearby Mt. Holly and shared some information about its history and where the tasting room is. It would have been churlish to order anything else. Ethan, the bartender, served us 20 oz glasses of it. We added a couple of shots and left to return home. What a wonderful world. Thank goodness that some bars are doing God’s work and opening early on Sundays.